Dying to be Green

Some 8,000 people die in the UK every year due to what is being called “fuel poverty” or, more simply, when it costs too much to heat your home. Naturally the left is already on the case, staging “die-ins” outside energy companies and demanding that carbon credits be used to make homes “super-energy efficient.”

Left out of the equation is that rising fuel prices can in no small part be attributed to the environmental mania which is at the heart of the movement. It isn’t oil and gas companies that are killing the elderly with high fuel prices. It’s carbon mania and environmentalism. Energy companies are not run by saints, but they don’t have an interest in putting oil and gas prices out of reach of ordinary people. It’s hard to sell home heat to the dead or the destitute. On the other hand environmentalists do indeed have that agenda.

When Obama’s energy secretary communicates that he has no interest in lowering the price of gasoline, instead focusing on energy efficiency and clean energy, he’s following the same inhumane line which has made it so expensive to drive a car or heat a home in Europe.

Talk of using carbon credits for “super-energy efficiency” is an admission that a movement using dead seniors as a prop is actually pushing to make energy use as expensive as possible and to reduce usage as much as possible. The “die-in” crowd isn’t for lowering energy prices — it’s for adding more taxes that will benefit energy efficiency and clean energy experts.

Say what you will about energy companies, but their business plan generally involves getting a product to market. The energy plan on the government side is to make energy more expensive and keep as much of it off the market as possible. The costs of their policies are not just a talking point. They are a grim reality.

The family that has to choose between feeding their children or being able to afford to drive to work or heat their home is not a talking point; they are the new Kulaks, the victims of ideological government policy that has no problem with watching people die so long as it gets its way.

Stalin killed millions to industrialize the Soviet Union. The New Left will kill millions to deindustrialize the West. It’s already doing it. While its activists are trying to peg the blame for fuel poverty fatalities on a government which is badly out of cash, it need look no further than its own activists and celebrities who preach the green life from their mansions.

In a more reasonable world, Lucy Lawless’ drilling publicity stunt would be connected directly to high energy prices. Instead the media cheers her on and denounces the government for not diverting enough carbon credits to its latest scheme. But while they lecture on the menace of global warming, ordinary people are freezing to death.

Clear energy has become the new Communism, an ideological program that can never be achieved, but for which we must all strive no matter how many die all along the way. In Scotland, the perennially deranged Scottish National Party has called for generating 100 percent of the country’s electricity from wind, wave and tidal power by 2020. He may have only left out the fairies. This plan would add 900 pounds to the average fuel bill. Which is how fuel poverty gets started.

Wales, which has the highest fuel poverty rate in the UK, is working on one of Europe’s largest wind farms and has a plan for total clean energy by 2025, if anyone is still alive and hasn’t frozen to death. Wind farms don’t tend to do too well in the cold, and human beings don’t tend to do too well without heat.

The current “green” policies will see higher prices for two out of three homes in the UK by the end of the decade. And while it’s easy to blame energy companies for that, it’s government policies that are responsible, especially when companies and homeowners get saddled with the cost of wind farms and various voodoo measures to fight global warming that mainly end up putting money in the pockets of the well-connected.

Americans complaining about high gas and oil prices can buckle up because what is happening in Europe is only a taste of what is coming this way. Last year UK petrol prices hit 6 pounds per gallon. That’s nearly 10 dollars, though for the imperial gallon, which is greater than the US gallon. If you think it costs a lot to fill up a tank now, consider that the UK has a better ratio of production to population than we do. The high prices aren’t an accident; they’re part of the green program.

The Obama agenda isn’t to make energy prices affordable. It’s to make them so horribly impossible to afford that we’ll use less energy. Fuel poverty is the agenda here and we know that’s so because he told us so.

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times and then just expect that other countries are going to say ok,” he said. And, “If somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches.”

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.

kongMing

I hope Sam Rami has Spartacus hit Lucretia (Lucy Lawless) with one of those flaming logs rolled down Mt. Vesuvius. She is the worst part of the show and I've seen hogs have more attractive sex.

mrbean

SO you are into voyeuring hogs having sex? tsk tsk – Kinky fellow!

Sorrow01

From what I saw of her in Xena, she is more comfortable with lesbian sex.

BcdErick

A good essay and obviously true. So why is it that If you look at the polls and read the MSM it is clear that, as of now, Obama will be re-elected easily? His personal approval rating, as of today, is 53%. I can't explain it, but facts are facts. I guess we're doomed.

Daniel Greenfield

Two reasons. Mass propaganda and a self-destructive Republican party.

maturin20

Where, where are the snowjobs of yesteryear?

bmatkin

check the polls, they always, always exaggerate the left just before an election. I have never seen an election where the polls were not manipulated.

stephenx100

Obama is winning this battle because his propaganda ministry (the media) plus the "useful idiots" in the education establishment have so thoroughly brainwashed the American and European citizens that they actually worship as heroes the environmental hordes who have created this debacle. It is hopeless if we attempt to counter this overwhelming force that dominates our politics and culture unless we take on the real culprits. Not until the populace recognizes the villainy of the Sahara Club and its ilk can we begin to halt our descent into civilization collapse. Today one can never hear a word of criticism of the Sahara club who are untouchable folk heroes. I see no hope. We are doomed!

Oleg

You may also notice that those polls are commisioned by the Washington Post, ABC, New York Times, and the rest of the media heavily invested in this disaster of a president. I've also seen polls that cite that any one of the top three Republican candidates could beat Obama, it just depends on who they sample and what questions they ask. Polls are not facts there can be manipulated in countless ways, but I will tell you this much, if gas is $5 or more a gallon and unemployment still above 8% next fall the "one" will be a one termer.

davarino

I guess they will have us burn the dead to provide energy when the wind isnt blowing and the clouds block the sun.

http://www.okcteaparty.org DMW

Hmmm. "Soylent GREEN!" (Literally)

theleastthreat

People will just cut down trees to stay warm.

Daniel Greenfield

Pensioners in the UK are buying armloads of discounted books and burning those.

theleastthreat

I suppose "Know Your Power" has some use after all.

Stuart Parsonns

Source please Daniel ? Even discounted books are very expensive as a fuel.

Daniel Greenfield

Blog comment from a UK resident. So it's anecdotal, but I imagine these are discounted enough to be nearly free.

Sorrow01

They should start with the collected works of Al Gore.

Daniel Greenfield

I've seen those in the dollar bin actually.

Kal

Easter Island?

Chickie

Not with the green police.
Trees are good
humans evil.

theleastthreat

Trees are at the bottom of the fuel chain. Humans are at the top .If the situation were reversed, we'd be the ones in the fireplace.

Spider

This is what happens when you let the Enviro Nazzi Left dictate your energy policy for 40 years. This mess was created by craven polititions always caving in to the Enviros at every turn. They justify it with the canard "what do you want dirty water and air?" Well it is possible to have abundant energy and "reasonable" environmental policies. But it seems our governments policy always sides with the unreasonable to the point that we no longer even drill our own oil or build a nuke plant for 35 years. This policy is an abomnation that is killing our country and has to be reversed.

mrbean

Environmentalist opposition to vital energy sources goes beyond fossil fuels; for decades environmentalists have worked tirelessly to stop the most practical non-fossil-fuel sources of power: nuclear power and hydroelectric power, neither of which emits CO2 when producing energy. Consider: in 1975 a fledgling nuclear energy industry reported that its members were producing electricity at a total cost of less than half of what coal plants could. Better still, this industry was in its relative infancy; thousands of scientists and engineers were brimming with ideas about how to make power-generation better, cheaper, safer, and more efficient. If the environmentalist movement had been interested in maximum human progress, and certainly if it had been really worried about a CO2-based global mega-climate catastrophe, it would have celebrated nuclear power.
But it wasn't, and it didn't

Daniel Greenfield

Indeed. We could have had a nation's worth of cheap power. We still could. But now Bill Gates is teaming up with China on Thorium reactors. Because the enviros don't want them in the states.

maturin20

They're such NIMBY-pambys.

FriendofGaryCooper

Nuclear power is great; but it has a big problem; namely, how do you successfully handle nuclear waste? How do you make nuclear waste safe? Where do you bury it, and how? Solve this problem, and nuclear power will be the way to go–no questions asked.

Daniel Greenfield

Nuclear waste is not nearly as big of a problem as it's been made out to be. Thorium reactors, if they work out, should be fairly clean at that.

Oleg

It's called reprocessing, France recycles their spend fuel rods into new fuel rods, they are 90% nucelar power because of it. But what about the waste from coal fired plants, the clinkers, the ash, the heavy metals like lead, arsenic, mercury, at least nuclear material become less dangerous with time, arsenic does not. Not to mention that there radioactive impurities in the coal as well, trace elements of radium and thorium goimng up the smokestacks that are totally uncontroled. How about the thousands who die every year in coal mining accidents, and i mean thousands. Have you ever heard the expression "Bone and blood is the price of coal"?

FriendofGaryCooper

Yes, in the song "The Spring Hill Mine Disaster," very well done by the Brothers Four.

pyeatte

There are too many dumb people out there that believe the control freak politicians and eco-nuts. However it appears that people must die until they get tired of dying before they will do something about it. It may be that we end up putting the responsible politicians and eco-nuts up in front of walls for their crimes against humanity..

Chickie

We must save the life of every wolly caterpillar .
In the mean time i've had 2 wells dug on some property i bought.Both are too contaminated to use.
From what? Farm chemical run offs.

maturin20

I blame the obesity epidemic. Too much of our energy has been converted to mass.

Larry

Stick a wick in them and use them for candles when the power goes out.

You know it's a good idea.

intrcptr2

Mandatory liposuction IS the solution to our enegry woes; its clean AND renewable.

Flowerknife_us

The poor who can least afford the increase of costs live in the type of houses with the worst level of energy efficency. With no hope of ever being updated. No doubt the taxpayer will be told to cover these costs.

Fundimental change=poverty-over time- for all. The Government dependent will get a legal pass from all the laws passed and rules enacted to extract wealth from the currently self sufficent.

The self sufficent are really screwed. Being a minority without any rights in a political/media enviroment who use "rights" to cover the wholesale loss thereof.

PETER

There are, among us, a significant subset who canot see the course we sail upon.

BS77

It is hard to believe that just two hundred years ago the population on our small planet was just a pittance compared to the roiling mass of eight billion people now clamoring for more more more more more… No wonder the planet is being destroyed as we speak.

ebonystone

A problem due entirely to 3rd-World countries. In Europe, the native population has been at ZPG for decades; what small increase there has been is due to massive immigration from the 3rd World.
But in the 3rd World, countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, the Congo, and Tanzania (to name just a few) have doubled, or tripled, or even quadrupled their populations in the last 50 years, while exporting tens of millions more to Europe and North America.

OregonBuzz

With respect to the so-called "greed" of the oil/gas companies, consider the following; “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." Adam Smith

Cornelia Bolds

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